把創新融入新玩意中 警惕假創新
Children love to play with new toys but hate disruption to their routines. These traits persist in adult life: innovation is readily adopted when it is incorporated in new gadgets but innovation that involves doing things differently is resisted.
Look around a university. At a superficial level, modern information technology has changed everything. Most activities — communication, scheduling and presentations — are conducted electronically. At a deeper level, nothing at all has changed. The course structures, materials and the methods of pedagogy remain essentially the same.
到一所大學四處轉轉。從表面看，現代信息技術已改變了一切。大多數活動——溝通、排課表和做報告——都是以電子方式完成的。但在更深層次上，一切都沒有改變。課程結構、教材和教學法本質上還是老樣子。As Richard Nelson, the economist of innovation, has pointed out while American children are much healthier than they once were they are not much better at learning to read. Innovation that comes in a pill or injection is easily adopted: innovation that manages a process better is not.
正如創新經濟學家理查德•納爾遜(Richard Nelson)所指出的那樣，當今的美國兒童比過去的兒童健康得多，但他們學習閱讀的能力並不比過去強太多。以藥丸或注射形式出現的創新很容易被接受，優化流程的創新則不然。
It has always been so. Anaesthetics were developed in the mid-19th century and soon all surgeons were using them. However, when a Viennese physician discovered that the most important thing surgeons could do to keep their patients alive, especially those who were newborn infants, was to wash their hands, the profession resisted the innovation for half a century.
情況一直是如此。麻醉劑是19世紀中期開發出來的，不久之後所有外科醫生都開始使用麻醉劑。然而，當一位維也納內科醫生髮現，要保住病人、尤其是新生兒的性命，外科醫生所能做的最重要的事是洗手時，醫療界抵制這項創新的時間長達半個世紀。While doctors would readily experiment with new chemicals, they fought any acknowledgment that their procedures were defective.
儘管醫生們願意試驗新的化學制劑，但他們竭力拒絕承認自己的治療程序存在瑕疵。Authors and editors use computers and software to write and compile, and ereaders are everywhere. Yet any suggestion that these developments imply a different and diminished role for publishers and booksellers is fiercely resisted, both by these businesses and by authors and readers.
如今，寫手和編輯使用電腦和軟件進行寫作和編輯，電子閱覽器已無處不在。不過，任何人只要提及這些進展意味着出版商和書商的角色被改變和削弱，都會受到這兩者以及作者和讀者的強烈抵制。Airlines place orders for the latest models but established carriers find it hard to adapt to the market challenges set by low-cost carriers. Their response has been to set up distinct subsidiaries to implement[APE?] the new business model. Yet Delta’s Song was sung only briefly and British Airways’ Go went.
航空公司會訂購最新型的飛機，但老牌航空公司發現很難針對低價航空公司引發的市場競爭做出調整。它們的對策是設立完全不同的子公司，來執行新的業務模式。不過，達美航空(Delta)的Song只維持了很短時間，而英國航空(British Airways)的Go也已成過去式。Since even babies are more suspicious of new ways of doing things than of new toys, we might seek evolutionary explanations. But why would our ancestors have been more ready to hunt new prey, or adopt new tools, than to adapt routines? Perhaps innovations incorporated in physical items are more plainly beneficial than process innovations. It is hard to argue that a smartphone is not an improvement on an instrument with a large rotary dial tethered to a desk.[DO WE FULLY ANSWER THIS QUESTION?]
既然就連嬰兒對新的做事方式也比對新玩具更懷疑，我們或許可以去尋找進化上的解釋。但是，爲何相對於調整習慣，我們的祖先更樂於捕捉新獵物或使用新工具呢？或許是，相對於流程創新，融入實物中的創新帶來的好處更加一目瞭然。我們很難主張，相對於被電線固定在桌上、帶着很大撥號盤的舊式電話，智能手機不是一種改進。Some gadgets that look like improvements are not: three-dimensional cameras meet a need we do not seem to have, and airships and supersonic passenger jets turned out to be a bust. These blind alleys in product innovation are sufficiently rare that they stand out in business and technological history.
有些玩意兒看上去有改進，實際上並無改進：3D立體相機滿足的是一項我們似乎並不存在的需求，飛艇和超音速客機後來被證明是個失敗。這些走進死衚衕的產品創新罕見到了能在商業與科技史上佔據突出地位。A low-cost airline, however, is not superior to a full-service one but rather the provider of a product better adapted to the needs of modern passengers. Establishing a new routine requires time and practice, and many new routines do not represent improvements; witness the fate of the majority of business re-engineering exercises. While transformational chief executives and management consultants chafe at the resistance they encounter, the problem is not just the lethargy of subordinates and the scale of their personal investment in established processes. It is often well-founded doubt as to whether the “change agents” actually know what they are doing. Political leaders, who seek office by claiming that everything their predecessors are doing is wrong, are even more frequently the advocates of useless process reorganisation.
然而，不是說低價航空公司優於全業務航空公司，而是說它們提供了一種更符合現代乘客需求的產品。形成新習慣需要時間和實踐，而許多新習慣不代表改進；看一看大多數業務流程改造的命運吧。儘管心向革新的首席執行官和管理顧問對遭遇的抵制感到惱火，但問題不僅僅在於下屬們的慵懶懈怠以及他們對既定流程已投入個人努力的大小。人們常常有充分理由懷疑“改革推動者”是否真瞭解自己在做什麼。有些政治領導人宣稱前任所做一切都是錯的，希望藉此上臺，他們倡導的流程改革甚至更可能是毫無用處的。So we are right to view such novelties with suspicion. And the behaviour of our children suggests this well-founded scepticism towards those who would re-engineer our routines has become hard wired in human responses.
所以，我們以懷疑眼光看待此類奇思異想是正確的。我們的孩子的行爲表明，對於那些想要改造我們習慣的人報以正當的懷疑，已經深深地植入了人類的反應心理中了。
